The Anarcho-Liberationists

There is a lot of confusion, even among self-proclaimed ‘Anarchists’, about the differences between Anarchism and authoritarianism. At first glance, one would think it impossible to confuse the two. They are polar opposites, right? One is absolute freedom while the other is no freedom at all, right? But upon closer examination, these two opposite philosophies are oftentimes mistaken for one another.

I think everyone can agree that Anarchism is all about freedom from oppression and hierarchy, while the fullest extent of authoritarianism is absolute fascism and oppression to the fullest extent possible. However, not everyone holds the same values. Not everyone obeys the same moral code. With clashing values comes disagreement on how others should act, and how others should be permitted to act, even within Anarchist circles and within the Anarchist movement as a whole.</td><td><img title="we can all agree that black is black and white is white..." src="http://anarchistnews.org/files/pictures/2012/boycrying.jpg"></td></tr></...
<!--break-->
Most self-proclaimed Anarchists would readily agree that everyone should be free to do as they choose, but many leave it at that. That is where the confusion and clashing values come in. If everyone is free to do as they choose, then surely even the government agents, bankers, and tyrants of all types are, like everyone else, free to do as they choose. Following this logic, the most oppressive dictators in the history of humanity are perhaps the truest Anarchists to ever exist: They do as they choose. They do not let others prevent them from pursuing their goals.

Despite claiming that others should be free to do as they choose, Anarchists condemn dictators and bankers without hesitation, claiming that these evil oppressors do not have the right to do the things which they do, that their actions should not be tolerated, and that they must be stopped by any means necessary. By taking this stance, Anarchists are hypocrites when faced with their own claim that everyone should be free to do as they choose. ‘The fascist scum prevent others from living freely’, they proclaim, refusing to see the innate hypocrisy, the paradoxical nature, of the concept of allowing all to do as they choose.

Of course the fascist oppressors should be stopped! They should be stopped by any means necessary! But that goes against the concept of allowing all to do as they choose. Therefore, all true Anarchists who do not wish to live as hypocrites are left with only one option: Redefine Anarchism. Redefine what Anarchism means to them. Anarchism must be redefined, or clarified, as meaning the following: ‘All are free to do as they choose insofar as their actions do not infringe on the freedom of anyone else’. Freedom is not just a one-way street! People have got no right to choose when it gets in the way of others’ wellbeing!

Taking it a step further, all who call themselves Anarchists should take a step back and objectively reevaluate their own lives and lifestyles. Most self-proclaimed Anarchists live very hypocritical lives. They will put on balaclavas and yell ‘fuck the police’ at marches, they will smash the windows of banks, and some will even throw Molotovs at fascist oppressors. Then they will go home and greedily indulge in personal pleasures. They will eat meat which oppresses all nonhuman life on the sole grounds that those animals are inferior just because they have a different type of physical body (all while petting the cat or dog sitting beside them). They will use products tested on animals, which again victimizes innocent beings just because they are different. They will buy and use products of corporatism that significantly contribute to the destruction of Earth and all life upon it. Some will even smoke cash crops farmed and harvested by slaves in other countries.

Ultimately, most self-proclaimed Anarchists are simply another type of fascist scum: People who will fight those who oppress them personally, but who will not hesitate to partake in those self-indulgences which harm all those who they view as ‘inferior’. They live with the same corrupt, self-righteous mentality as that of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and patriarchs. There is no difference.

Naturally, Anarchism leads to Veganism, Animal Liberation, and Earth Liberation, as only a Vegan truly lives in accordance with Anarchist values to not oppress others simply because they are weaker or physically different. But Veganism is not enough. Those who sincerely hold Anarchism close to their hearts will stop at nothing in the face of oppression. There are already many ‘Anarchists’ actively revolting against fascist governments and banks, but many of these people are the same ones who oppress others in their daily life, and there is a lot of uncertainty and undecided values within the Anarchist movement.

Some ‘Anarchists’ are pacifists who think that we should do nothing more than hold up signs and shout at our enemies. Of course these people fail to look at the state of things objectively, decrying violence even when that violence is directed at those who directly destroy life, while at the same time saving innocent lives. Of course the lives of innocents are more important than those of their oppressors. Without question pacifism is a fallacy! But what does that leave? Even militant Anarchists have conflicting values. Some live by the philosophy of ‘any means necessary’, while others take a more moderate, if not entirely pacifistic, stance. However, any stance short of any means necessary is putting the concepts of peace and pacifism, and the lives of genocidal tyrants, above all innocent life. And that cannot be tolerated! That is hypocrisy to the fullest extent! This is fucking war! All is justified against those who are guilty of destroying innocent life! If you infringe on the freedom of someone else, you have forfeited your own freedom and must be dealt with accordingly.

Do I sound like a fascist yet? Is it oppressive to force others to accept my Liberationist views? Of course not! It is quite the opposite! As I explained before, Anarchism is allowing all to do as they choose insofar as their actions do not infringe on the freedom of others. No true Anarchist would argue with me if I said that I would be justified in putting a bullet through someone who threatens my life without provocation. Nor would any true Anarchist argue with me if I said that I would be justified in putting a bullet through someone who threatens my mom’s life without provocation. This is no different than going out and stopping the fascist scum, be they bankers or government agents or meat farmers, by any means necessary. It is a matter of extensional self defense, and it is a matter of upholding the Anarchist values of allowing others to do as they choose if and only if their actions do not infringe on the freedom of others.

What does this lead to? Insurrection, of course! The warriors of the Justice Department, Animal Rights Militia, Hunt Retribution Squad, Revolutionary Cells, Animal Liberation Brigade, Earth Liberation Army, Hardline, Black Panther Party, and all other militant, uncompromising liberation movements who fight against oppression by any means necessary are the truest Anarchists there are! Abdul Haqq, the ALF Lone Wolf, a man who I very much admire, once wrote that he no longer identifies himself as an Anarchist because he holds very authoritarian views against oppression. My brother, of course you are an Anarchist! Your values and beliefs are those which every true Anarchist warrior should hold: that of the Vegan Hardline!

Anarchism is allowing all to do as they choose insofar as their actions do not infringe on the freedom of other life. As Anarchists, we have the right to do whatever we want in our personal lives. We also have the moral obligation to prevent others from infringing on the freedom of innocent life. Forcing our beliefs on others is very much in accordance with Anarchism when those beliefs are ones of Liberation and the ones being forced to submit to our beliefs are fascist scum who would take a life for a penny! Now is the time for war! All who call themselves Anarchists, Animal Liberationists, Earth Liberationists, or Human Liberationists must join forces and realize that WE ARE ONE. We are simply approaching the same philosophy, Liberation, from different starting points. Ultimately, we are the same. We are the Anarcho-Liberationists! Let us go forward and crush hierarchy, put an end to oppression, prevent all authority, and liberate all innocent life by any means necessary!

Comments

I think there exists one and only one instance where an anarchist is permitted to be authoritarian, and that is if they catch one of their own committing a traitorous act, like say masturbating to a photo of Bush, which would carry the death penalty!

If I ever see anarchism equated to "hardline" again, I will fucking hunt down the author myself. Hardline= anti-queer, anti-reproductive freedom (as well, as this other stupid shit detailed in this "article").

This is some disgusting shit being permeated on this website right now. Why is the "wingnut" tag not included?

I was willing to give it some thought, until the anti-meat, pro-vegan rant came up. I don't eat animals because i think animals are "inferior". I eat them for nutrition and because even a well rounded vegan diet is ultimately unsatisfying and not a good for mental/physical health for the long-term. Especially if you are exorcising/lifting weights frequently. This is coming from someone who was vegan for 6 years and tried the vegan bodybuilding healthy lifestyle.

"However, any stance short of any means necessary is putting the concepts of peace and pacifism, and the lives of genocidal tyrants, above all innocent life. And that cannot be tolerated! That is hypocrisy to the fullest extent! This is fucking war! All is justified against those who are guilty of destroying innocent life! If you infringe on the freedom of someone else, you have forfeited your own freedom and must be dealt with accordingly.

Do I sound like a fascist yet?"

Yes, yes, you do. And do you know that fascists advocate their view as freedom? Not as "oppression to the fullest extent possible." You say fascism and anarchism are sometimes confused as one another. Are you listening to yourself? Walter Bond was not an anarchist, and neither are you.

This sucks. Id be the first to point out that there some bossy ass pushy ass obnoxious motherfuckers around, but this is crap. There is a bit of an authoritarian paradigm created in some, but I think even in these people they're somewhat conscious of it and wrestle with it to an extent. Even a lot of the more obnoxious types, if its a genuine paradigm born out of fight and not 20 with shit for brains and to lose I wouldn't feel like fighting them on ideological grounds so much as personal. If anything, authoritarianism is a self destruct mechanism. There are some fundamentalist doushe bags out there. I let A.L.F. get a pass. The rest I just chalk up to crazy.

"Naturally, Anarchism leads to Veganism, Animal Liberation, and Earth Liberation, as only a Vegan truly lives in accordance with Anarchist values to not oppress others simply because they are weaker or physically different. But Veganism is not enough. Those who sincerely hold Anarchism close to their hearts will stop at nothing in the face of oppression"

This just isn't true. Anarchism is worker's control and self-management of industry. Anarcho-Syndicalsim is the only real anarchism. All you stupid fucking insuwrecktionaries are clueless. The same goes for you veganarchists. If y'all want to join the real fight, you can contact me at loveandstruggle_part2@riseup.net

I'm no lifestylist moralist like the above commentator, but you seem pretty fucking clueless yourself. Syndicalism is a producerist/workerst philosophy that is still capitalist. And syndicalist strategy is absolutely anachronistic.

Not the above troll, but I'm curious as to how you would define 'producerism'. When I think of the word, anarcho-syndicalism does not really come to mind. Syndicalism is indeed a capitalist ideology; but would it not be easier to transition to anarchist communism from a syndicalist economic arrangement? Also, what aspects of solidarity unionism and direct action are "absolutely anachronistic"?

My guess is they're referring to the fact that syndicalism puts the results of production in the hands of those who produced it. Anarchism is a prefigurative concept, and as such, has to transitional phases - what you see is what you get. Therefore, the argument of "but it's *closer* to what you actually want!" is (largely) irrelevant. If you espouse some system that puts the objects of production in the hands of those who produced those objects, you do not espouse a system that puts the objects of production in everyone's hands.

That said, I really don't see much wrong with putting the objects of production in the hands of those who produced it, so long as the means of production are collectively available. Not that I think syndicalism is a good idea, but the idea of "producerism" (or at least how I'm interpreting it, which, given that I'm pulling this totally out of my ass, could be 100% wrong)? That I could really go either way on.

You cannot assume that instinctual behavior is fallacious. That is like saying that the instinctual drive to copulate (fucking if you don't know what that means)is not the reason for rape and is therefore not an argument. Forget about Freud or any other fucking social Darwinists, this is solely a matter of logically piecing together the dynamics of individual behavioral tendencies within a social environment and how relationships involve an exchange of valuable resources, in this case protein to sustain life.

In the town i lived in years ago, i had an older friend who worked on a local alternative, left wing paper. After she would leave the editors room we would sometimes chat at a local bar. She was about ten years older than me, had been involved with an earlier wave of squatting in europe before coming back to the state extremely jaded.

I remember in political conversations with her she would always come back to the same point with regards to anarchism: that no one could really be an "anarchist" in this society, and therefore they were all hypocrites. Obviously her definition was a moral or at best ethical one, that an anarchist is someone who lives and relates to other only in nonhierarchical and non coercive ways.

Her argument produces a tautology all too familiar among right wing message boards, liberal green consumer advocates, and animal rights activists attempting to engage with a radical milieu: That anyone who claims to want freedom or equality or whatever, but lives in this culture, is a hypocrite.

Like most tautologies, the problem is in the original premise: anarchism has to first and foremost be understood as a position of negation towards the current order, an orientation toward revolt rather than a moral identity. THis is not to say that we dont have ethics, or that we dont have ideas about kinds of revolt we d like to avoid or what kinds of a society we d rather live in - but first and foremost our task is social revolution. That revolution has to be horizontal not just because of the society we want to come out of it, but primarily because that is the only way that term has any real substantive meaning to us.

You dont have to be an insurrectionary or a nihilist to agree with this. Really its just the only way not to be caught in an unending tautology of supposed and claimed hypcorisy : "Youre not a real anarchist, you just bought ice cream. You re not a real anarchist, you just drove a car. You re not a real anarchist, you just paid sales tax. etc. etc."

The vegan version of this is no different, only more batty: they want to consume their way out of industrial capitalism - small wonder capitalism is all to happy to produce a wide range of morally righteous products for their convenience. Theyre wrong on just about every account, from personal nutrition to ecology to economy - but really their most damning problem is a tautological understanding towards revolt and liberationist ideas that is ultimately theological and moral in scope. They are the nagging christians on the streetcorner of rebellion. They will occassionally join in, but they come off as confused at best, driven by moral obligation and guilt rather than a personally invested (and ultimately collective) desire for liberty or vengeance.

Yeah, but there is at least something inherently moral in the idea that meat is murder. It might at times take on batty tones, and I'm not a strict vegan but I get it. My housemates a sweet heart when it comes to these arguments so I can excuse them.

"Murder" implies a breaking of social mores in the act of killing someone, e.g., taking your mother off of life support is different than shooting a child. Meat is not murder to a wolf (and don't give me that speciesist shit about "we're more evolved beings with choices", etc.; we were better human beings the last time we were more like wolves). Meat is killing and in our culture, it's torture, but in the same way that mainstream porn does not represent the true nature of sex, the slaughter industry has taken anything sacred or sustainable out of eating another animal.

Nice critique. Also similar to the tautology which is developed from the false premise that 'cops are ok because someone has to do the job cops do', as if any of us, mutually responsible about our community, are incapable of dealing with problems, but also from a start, the community would not be capitalistic, and therefore not reproducing and generating the very negative outcomes in a state of denial.

you make a good point. at the bottom of it is indoctrination that has one confuse idealization for reality. when a matrix of people-pens [sovereign states] is dropped down over top of free-associating indigenous people and the free associating rivers and ecosystems of the natural habitat, the physical reality of unbounded space doesn’t go away. the modified reality is that there is now a bunch of crazies who not only believe in the existence of their own self-serving invention of a state [and the corporations it brings into existence with a piece of paper and a few strokes of the pen], but who swear an oath to bear arms and give their lives to sustain belief in it; i.e. to kill or incarcerate heretics who are a threat to sustained belief in it.

anyone who believes in the ‘existence’ of a thing-in-itself system must necessarily believe in the existence of both ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’, ‘directors’ and ‘doers’, ‘management’ and ‘workers’, since a system-in-itself must jumpstart its own development and behaviour from out of its own internal components and processes [i.e. from a notional centre of intellection and purpose]
imagine the response of indigenous peoples and other ‘non-believers’ who this patchwork matrix of sovereigntist pens [and corporate pens] is dropped down over, when they hear remarks like ‘the world has changed’; ‘this is progress’; ‘the uncivilized anarchist world you speak of is a thing of the past’.

that is, they speak as if ‘physical reality itself’ has changed. they are confusing their own synthetic self-serving idealizations for reality. physical reality has not changed. the natural terrain is still unbounded, the rivers still run freely to the sea, the animals birds and insects freely associate as they always did. the only thing that has changed is that the land is now beset with a weirdo culture-cult who have made a religion out of controlling human behaviour.

the indigenous and other anarchists who live in this nut-infested world have to navigate so that they and their families survive. they are identified not as much by what they do, as by their non-belief in the existence of the state and its corporations, and the leader-follower role-plays that are a requisite part of that belief.

I disagree with this post when it comes to changing views of anarchism. First off understand the deffinition of anarchy. Anarchy: the absence of law. In order to be a anarchist you must live your life by the pure essecence of no rules. Do what you want and thats what you make of it. You cant say "oh, lets just say live by the way you want but not affect others" Your are completely miss informed that you the educated "anarcho-liberalist" was told, because by you putting the mere fact by not affecting others is a RULE.

When it comes to veganism no thats not anarchy. That is a mere choice of diet. You choose it because you have the free will to eat what ever you want. Weither it be meat, veggies, junk food, or even humans. All by your power of free choice. To worry about animals is one thing to protest but its deffinately not anarchy. If your so concerned for the animals join a PETA orginaztion and stop referring it to anarchy.

Lastly when it comes to WE ARE ONE! bullshit. Your offically have become the most unintelligent anarchist writer ive ever read. Anarchy is not possible in groups, and can only work on a personal belief and personal everyday pratice. It is impossible for anarchist to form together a orginazation because there is laws behind it. Anarchist can make friends by choice that believe the same thing but you cant make a organization of people that all want to revolt. Groups cause anarchy in the mere problem of arguement. So anarchist are all self governed by themselves and can make or break friends for the sake of free will of choice.

Your comment made me shed a tear, bravo.
this article almost gave me a panic attack though. I thought I was on the side where we try to fight capitalism and bad stuff, not bicker about our food choices.

I'm surprised that the biggest gripe that you folks have with this article is that it advocates veganism. I'm mean c'mon this article is fail on so many levels. From the strawman definition of anarchism to the hyper moralistic adherents to liberal consumer politics, I'd think that this article was ripe for the trollz. I guess not.

Oh man don't even get me started on Negotiation is Over and how it's the most asinine wingnut shit in the world.

‘anarchism’ is evidently to do with ‘organization’ and whether or not it is ‘rule/instruction-based’.

if it is ‘rule-based’ then the ‘ordering’ that constitutes ‘organization’ has to come through the individual’s intellect to drive his behaviour. the ‘authority’ is his in this case his ‘intellect and purpose’ that is directing his actions in an inside-outward asserting manner.

in this mode, people come up with new ‘programs’ for assertive action that they ‘cooperate’ on the implementing of. their organization comes from having a common intellectual program and purpose in their heads that drives their behaviour in a coordinated manner.

the program can become very widespread like the program of a state with 300 million members who are all following their president’s ‘simon says’ instructions.

contrast this with the ‘free association’ in the flow of a freeway. unless one is a control-freak driving a tank, one lets one’s behaviour be orchestrated by the spatial relational openings forming in the flow. as one moves, one simultaneously contributes to the shaping of these spatial-relational openings forming in the flow. there are no ‘rules’ to explain this free-association dynamic, but it can become highly organized, as in fluid dynamics.

mathematically, it is impossible to describe this organization in terms of some common program within the individual participants. this mathematical impossibility is referred to as ‘the three body problem’ and it crops up when three or more bodies move under one another’s simultaneous mutual influence. basically, when there are no reference frames to inform you of ‘what you are doing’, you can only ‘know how you are moving’ relative to the other things that are moving so everybody is in the same plight of not knowing their own movements.

everyone of us knows how this experience feels, ... some more than others. if you were doing aerobatics as part of an aerobatics team and flying in a trio in close formation and encountered some turbulence, you wouldn’t worry about or need to know who had moved out of formation and who had 'held course'. if all three were flying forward at 100 miles an hour and drifting sideways to the right at 20 miles per hour and in encountering a patch of turbulence the drift of the airplane on the right declined to 15 mph, the drift of the airplane in the centre was sustained at 20 mph and the drift of the airplane on the left increased to 25 miles per hour, the three planes would move towards convergence. the solution of the pilots would be to mutually diverge. no need to know which of them had moved how, their coordinated behaviour would be purely relational.

if they had big egos, the pilot on the right might claim he had held course while the pilots in the centre and on the left were squeezing over towards him. the pilot in the centre might likewise claim that he had held course and that the pilots on the left and right of him were squeezing in towards him, and the pilot on the left might likewise claim that he had held course and that the pilot in the centre and on the right were squeezing over towards him.

the team doesn’t need gps's to solve this problem, their coordination is purely relative and based on relative convergence and divergence. there are no ‘rules’ and ‘calculations’ as in simulations such as BOIDS. we experience the converging directly and we co-form diverging action directly. purely relational action can’t be represented in euclidian space, it requires non-euclidian space which is purely relational such as the space on the surface of a sphere. if this space on the surface of the sphere is filled with moving vehicles, the only reference that any/all drivers have is the spatial-relational configuration they are situationally included in, which is continually transforming. the organizational patterns that develop, which can be very highly ordered, develop out of free association without any basis in rules. no-one ever gets to know ‘his own behaviour’ because it cannot be isolated from everyone else’s. it is nevertheless 'our behaviour' in the relational motion sense of a 'sailboater's' behaviour in a storm in the open ocean, but not in the absolute motion internal power and steerage directed destination-oriented sense of a powerboater on a mill pond.

of course, if some video recorder imposing some kind of grid provides a playback, it may look like this ties down the behaviour of the individual [we can specify an explicit trajectory relative to whatever grid we impose]. but the reference grid in the playback could be centered/fixed on him in which case he would never move and the motion would be attributed to everyone else moving. alternatively, the grid could be centred on any one of the vehicles in the playback and that vehicle would never move and the motion would be attributed to everyone else moving. in non-euclidian relational space, there is no basis [no fixed point] for anchoring a reference grid, so any choice is as good as any other. this corresponds to the space of our natural experience.

organization by free association is nature’s way.

our culture has the habit of working with a reference grid and constructing organization on that basis. we use ‘time and place’ according to a standard clock and standard set of named points, and we organize on that basis; i.e. we program our actions and organization through our own intellect and purposeful drive and direction. in this case, we no longer need to let our movements be orchestrated by the continually unfolding-in-the-present relational configuration we are included in. we can work our behaviour by ourselves, from the inside outward, according to a space and time reference grid and our own internal intellect and purpose drive and direction. [we can do both so the question is not 'which method we use' but rather, 'which one do we put in precedence over the other' [that choice is what divides the Western culture from the aboriginal cultures].

the ‘organization’ in the flow of traffic on a freeway develops very differently when everyone’s behaviour is (a), by internal program, being FIRSTLY, internally driven and directed from our own intellect and purpose, (b), by free association, being FIRSTLY orchestrated by the continually unfolding-in-the-present relational patterns that one is situationally included in and at the same time, co-forming [i.e. “the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants” Mach’s principle].

Western civilization is in the habit of opting for organization by way of (a), by internal program, by being FIRSTLY, internally driven and directed from our own intellect and purpose. the aboriginal culture, on the other hand, is in the habit of opting for organization by way of (b), by free association, being FIRSTLY orchestrated by the continually unfolding-in-the-present relational patterns that one is situationally included in and at the same time, co-forming.

the (a) approach to organization corresponds to what many people would call ‘authoritarian’ while the (b) approach to organization corresponds to what many people would call ‘anarchism’.

when we are in the flow of the freeway, many of us, particularly if we are vulnerable, put (b) mode first and (a) mode second, as the aboriginal culture does generally. if we are INvulnerable and driving a semi or tank, we may reverse the precedence and put (a) mode first and (b) mode second. this is the order of precedence that is 'institutionalized' in our Western culture; e.g. in traffic control. we are fined if we use (b) first and go through a red light when there is no-one around. in other words, our rule-based culture, by putting (a) mode in precedence, obviates our use of (b) mode so that our natural skills of free association atrophy and we acquiesce to becoming a tool of our intellectual programming. we start dancing like dieter on SNL, ... 'und now, vee dahnce'.

some people seem to be so happy to find articles that are deficient. it is almost as if the more deficient the article appears to be, the more elevated they feel. of course, conspicuous disgust and a few clever sneers that bring forth the reviewer's ability to suss out such things is needed to establish their elevated status.

why i am commenting on such 'conspicuous disgust and clever sneering'? it may not seem to be worth it.

well, as it turns out, my interest is in including the tools of inquiry in our inquiry. this means that how we go about our inquiry should be included in our inquiry, so your remarks, and a lot of remarks in this forum, represent the 'purificationist' approach to inquiry. this type of inquiry encourages people to pay no attention to comments which appear to be shoddy logic or even intentionally spurious/trolling. of course most of politics is intentionally spurious so it is often difficult to distinguish between the different categories of 'spurious'.

the purificationist approach to inquiry is decidedly Western, so there is lots of it in this forum.

in aboriginal circles, the approach to inquiry is not purificationist [pretty much the opposite] and everyone gets a chance to share their comments [sharing heartfelt comments on personal experience is encouraged] no matter how deficient or spurious they may be or appear to be. the aboriginal non-purificationist mode of inquiry is to bring everything into connective confluence and let the relational coherency across multiple experiences bring forth an understanding of what is going on that is common across the experiences, and thus an aperspectival view of what is unfolding.

now, if one takes the people in the circle and makes them all form a line and asks them to give their most forceful and articulate intellectual assessment of what is going on, before judges who will assess which of them has the most convincing/credible presentation, ... then we are back to the Western purificationist inquiry approach where we are free and indeed encouraged to mock and deride shabby and/or spurious presentations.

this Western purificationist mode of inquiry doesn't stop with the realm of ideas as it is applied to inquiry into people as well. if the person is seen as having a lot of deficiencies or if his/her very being seems spurious, he/she is prime fodder for joke cracking and not taking seriously. it shows up with common assessments of gays and lesbians and trans people, and with spics and niggers and chinks and kikes etc. etc.

so, if one goes into a circle on the topic of 'authoritarianism' and 'anarchism' one is not obliged to simply mock what one finds as deficient, but one can instead contribute something that may be useful to the other participants in the circle.

in the circle form of inquiry, one does not walk out after hearing the first person speak, deciding that this circle is too low-level to waste one's time in.

anyhow, these are two different approaches to inquiry which, in the view of those who believe that the tools of inquiry must be included in the inquiry, are an important part of the inquiry.

who knows, the most shoddy appearing or spurious comment, when brought into connective confluence with the rest, may give an illumination/insight that would otherwise be impossible.

the general ethic can be seen in the following aboriginal short-story;

My Father and the Lima Beans, ... by Paula Underwood [an oral historian with lifelong training in this ancient Native American methodology]

~^~

There was something going on in the kitchen. I could hear my mother’s voice and the soft query of my father. The tone in his voice caught my ear. There was more to be understood.

I heard my mother’s laugh and the rattling of a paper bag, … something hard going inside, many small things tumbling in. And finally, I heard my father’s whistle as he went out the screen door, . . . rattling whatever he had in that paper bag. His way of catching my attention.

‘He wants me to come,’ I thought. And, even as those words skimmed over the surface of my mind, my feet already carried me through that same screen door, following the music of my father’s whistle, the syncopation of the rattle which was a paper bag.

He was already seated on the beaten earth floor of our garage. . . our special place for learning. On the floor in front of him he had begun to set out a circle of lima beans. Lima beans! So that’s what he sought from my mother. Permission for some of our dinner to become one more lesson for an inquiring child.

‘What are you doing, Daddy?” I asked, seeing no explanation i could devise.

‘Why, I’m building my community, Honeygirl!’ And one by one he laid out a circle of lima beans, one of our Three Sacred Sisters, members of his new community.

‘This one is a woman who’s about 45 years old. She’s a real hard worker, but she sure is a nag!’ Holding up one bean for me to see, to understand as part of his community, he placed it carefully on the floor.

‘And this is a boy of about 12. He can be a real hard worker, too, but he’s into mischief most of the time!’

And one by one, my father described his community to me. A hunter who understood deer better than corn, an elderly woman who still knew how to bend to any task, two young men just learning how to hunt, a kind young woman who was soon to be married, a young woman who was very beautiful … and who knew this to be true …. fonder of sitting and letting others admire her than of bending to any task. One by one the complexities of any community, of the community my father gathered, were laid out before me for consideration.

‘Now,’ my father said when he was done, ‘that’s my community! Where’s yours?’

‘Mine? What do you mean mine?’ I asked, wondering if I should ask more lima beans of my mother, even less for dinner.

‘Well, you can have any of mine. Any you might like. You can take any member of my community you want for your own . . . and build your own community.’

What a thought! Any one I liked . . . build my own community …

‘Well, I don’t want the 45 year old woman who nags! There’s enough of that in this life. But I’ll take the 12 year old boy who gets into mischief. Guess if I can handle my brother I can handle him!’

And one by one I chose, … or did not choose, … members of my father’s community for my own. I chose every one I thought would get along well, the ones I thought would be nice to live with and left the others behind for my father to deal with. After all, he was older than me, wiser than me as well.

‘That it, Honeygirl?’ my Father asked?

‘Yeah, I think that’s all’.

‘Looks like a pretty nice group o’ folks!’ he went on.

‘I thought so!’ Just think how well we will all get on together.

‘Now,’ my Father added, ‘It’s harvest time and there’s a lot o’ things that need doin’. So let’s see how this is going to work. You need two people to walk down the rows o’ corn and twist off the heads. Then you need two people behind them to chop down the corn stalks. Over here you need four people ready to start processing the corn.’

One by one my father laid out the tasks that needed doing . . all at the same time.

And I very soon ran out of people!

‘Well,’ I suggested as the work yet undone stretched out in front of me. ‘Maybe I could add that 45 year old woman who’s a hard worker, even if she does nag! Maybe I could put her and that 12 year old that gets into mischief together. That way they’d keep each other busy and get a lot of work done!

‘And maybe I could add .. ‘

One by one the members of my father’s community found their way into my own, each chosen for some skill lacking in the others, all needed for the vital task of seeing our community through one more long, cold winter!

Still, the woman who knew she was beautiful had not been included. After all, what could someone like that add to a day filled with work?

‘Hoo-ee, Honeygirl, looks like your folks is really working hard. Looks like things are gettin done. But you know, they look tired to me. Looks to me like they need something to cheer them up. What could that be?

And then I remembered. The young woman who knew she was beautiful . . . also loved to sing. And it seemed to me maybe not so bad . . . if she sat on a rock . . . near the People . . . sat and sang to them of celebrations and full stomachs and a new Spring greeted by a happy People. If she sat and sang, she could ease their day, help their work, brighten their world.

Perhaps her self-awareness of beauty was not so bad after all!

And so you see how it was? How one by one each and every member of my father’s community found their way into mine .. . for this or that reason, this or that skill, this or that need as yet unmet.

And you see how it is, … from that day to this . . . I have never had any trouble at all including in my community people I might have found inconvenient, . . once upon a time . . . but saw now as offering any community . . . my community, . . the diversity we may yet need.

Hello, I just wanted to say your two comments are some of the most intellectual and fantastic things i've read in a long time; not just on the internet but in general. I am not an anarchist, but I sympathize with it and am at the same time skeptical. I haven't read much about it but came across this site. Do you have a blog or anywhere That I can read some of your views? If not, I would appreciate any recommendations for me to learn. of Aboriginal culture, anarchy, philosophy, or anything. Thanks.

My writing, for example, is couched in ‘relational understanding’ which differs from ‘rational understanding’ in a manner discussed by Ernst Mach using the metaphor of ‘figure and ground’. Rational understanding is in terms of the dynamics of figures; i.e. it is in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’. Relational understanding acknowledges that figure and ground [matter and space, inhabitant and habitat] are in conjugate relation, as in the case of a hurricane [figure] and the atmospheric flow-space it gathers in [ground]. Mach points out that PHYSICAL REALITY is where “the dynamics of the habitat/ground are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants/figures at the same time as the dynamics of the inhabitants/figures are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat/ground.” [‘Mach’s principle’].

Our standard way of discussing/understanding dynamics IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION [i.e. not in aboriginal and buddhist and vedic approaches to understanding] is to reduce dynamics to ‘what figures do’ where ‘figures’ are understood as ‘things-in-themselves’. For example, we know that a hurricane is a figure that is in conjugate relation with the atmospheric flow space [ground] that it gathers in [the figure is a ‘dimple in the flow’], but for convenience we impute all of the authorship of the dynamic to the 'figure' and we say that; ‘Katrina is intensifying and growing larger; ... Katrina is moving north towards the Gulf Coast; ... Katrina is wreaking destruction on New Orleans;... Katrina is dissipating.’.

Essentially, our habit or ‘convention’ of convenience is to mentally superimpose an absolute space and time reference frame over the ‘figure’ and describe what the figure does relative to an absolute frame, rather than dealing with the complexity of its being a dynamic ‘dimple’ in the dynamic ground, rather than a ‘thing-in-itself’ in empty space with ‘its own internal process driven and directed development and behaviour.

Since we reduce ourselves and biological organisms in general in this manner, this reduction we build into our language/discourse has a profound influence on how we see ourselves and the world; i.e. it has a profound influence on ‘what is reality’ to us. [This is discussed by Sapir and Whorf and is termed ‘the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’].

That’s the gist of difference between ‘relational understanding’ which acknowledges the conjugate figure/ground relation, and ‘rational understanding’ which reduces dynamics to ‘what things-in-themselves do’.

What you are ‘detecting’ is that my comments are in terms of ‘relational understanding’ instead of the usual ‘rational understanding’.

One of the ramifications here is that ‘hierarchy’ follows from ‘rational understanding’ or ‘thing-in-itself based understanding’ but not from ‘relational understanding. For example, as soon as one imposes ‘thing-in-itself’ status on ‘figure’ one must assume that its behaviour derives from its own internal processes; i.e. it must have its own ‘internal direction’ or ‘internal management’ of its behaviour. It must have an internal centre of control [management] as well as operational components to achieve behaviour [workers].

In the relational view, for example, the fertile valley [‘land of opportunity’] beckons and someone starts tilling the soil and someone else joins in and starts planting and someone builds some tools for the harvesting and someone else builds a grindstone to make some flour from the grain and a community farming operation ‘gathers’ RELATIONALLY in the general flow of life. The evolutionary drive is a combination of ‘epigenesis’ [outside-inward ground-to-figure orchestration by the opening of spatial possibility] and ‘genesis’ [inside-outward figure-to-ground blossoming of assertive potentialities].

NOW, if we lift out all the little wriggling creatures in this ‘community farming operation’ and hold them up in the air against a blank background we can apply ‘analytical inquiry’ and monitor what each participant is doing and how the multiple participants coordinate their activities to produce farm products. With this ‘description’ in hand, and thanks to the invention of money and wages and the concept of ‘paid labour’, we can install a ‘manager’ to ‘give voice’ to the description of activities, along with a bunch of workers that he can assign to the various tasks and, voila, a factory-farm based on the dynamics of figures, out of the context of the dynamics of ground. We can plunk this factory farm operation down anywhere we like. All that’s needed is a bag of money to purchase a manager and some workers. Of course we did cheat the people out of their own free association and their building of a relation with the land and with one another.

What’s the point? The point is that analytical inquiry or rational intellection orients solely to ‘figures’ out of the context of ‘ground’ and gives a view of dynamics in the one-sided terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’. From the point of view of analytical inquiry or ‘rational understanding’, the ‘community farming operation’ and the ‘factory farm operation’ are identical and produce the same results. But from the point of view of relational understanding, what has gone missing is the relationship between the ‘system’ of the farm operation and the ‘suprasystem’ of fertile valley, seasons, climate etc. the ‘system’ is included in [the ‘systems sciences/Ackoff’ call this ‘synthetical inquiry’]. Furthermore, this relation between suprasystem and system or between dynamic ground and dynamic figures provided the orchestrating/organizing force which, in the factory farming operation is replaced by a ‘manager-worker’ organizing force. There was no ‘boss’ in the community farming operation [there was shared leadership] and everyone was there on their own volition rather than because they were following a trail of money/wages.

Hierarchy and the leader-follower split follows from reduction of relational understanding of dynamics in terms of the conjugate figure-ground relation [physical reality] to rational understanding of dynamics in the convenient but over-simplified one-sided terms of the dynamics of figures.

That’s the story on the ‘two realities’ and the difference between them. Now for the ‘reading list’, but first, a ‘heads-up’ on ‘how to read’ the reading list.

Our approach to understanding when we read discussions on ‘relational space’ by Mach et al is something we don’t usually question, but the fact of the matter is, we normally interpret what we read through ‘rational lenses’, but ‘rational lenses’ are unable to see ‘relational dynamics’ so unless we suspend our rational viewing habit, we won’t even see the relational understanding that is being shared in these writings. My experience is that many people read this stuff but few ‘get it’. For example Bertrand Russell read Poincaré’s ‘Science and Hypothesis’ which is all about ‘relational understanding’ and he didn’t ‘get it’ and they had a public debate which never settled anything and they ‘agreed to disagree’. Poincaré said, for example, that absolute space and absolute time, geometry [that which we use to isolate ‘the dynamics of figures’] are language conventions that we use to simplify our modeling of physical phenomena;

“Finally, our Euclidean geometry is itself only a sort of convention of language; mechanical facts might be enunciated with reference to a non-Euclidean space which would be a guide less convenient than, but just as legitimate as, our ordinary space ; the enunciation would thus become much more complicated, but it would remain possible. Thus absolute space, absolute time, geometry itself, are not conditions which impose themselves on mechanics ; all these things are no more antecedent to mechanics than the French language is logically antecedent to the verities one expresses in French.” – Henri Poincare, Science and Hypothesis

The reading list cited below is in English [or German or French] but these are the worst [least competent] languages for discussing relational understanding. As Benjamin Whorf says;

“English compared to Hopi is like a bludgeon compared to a rapier.” – Benjamin Whorf

A few points to bear in mind if/as one reads the works listed below to keep oneself ‘on track’, taken from the works, are as follows;

(1.) “Science itself, … may be regarded as a minimization problem, consisting of the completest possible presenting of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought” –Ernst Mach

(in other words, we formulate laws in terms of the dynamics of figures and ignore the conjugate figure-ground relation because it allows us to generalize broadly and to predict future states. note that prediction only applies to ‘what things-in-themselves do’ and not to how the space that these things are included in is relationally transformed; i.e. it predicts what happens inside of the nuclear bomb but not how the space the bomb is included in is going to be transformed)

(2.) “That which is given to all in common we call the ‘physical’; that which is directly given only to one we call the ‘psychical’. That which is given only to one can also be called the ‘ego’ [ich].” – Ernst Mach, ‘The Guiding Principles of My Scientific Theory of Knowledge’

(what is ‘given to all in common’ is the transformation of space, and what is ‘in our heads’ is our personal perspective; e.g. if we are a colonizer our perspective is that we are constructing a wonderful new world in America and if we are an aboriginal our perspective is that the colonizer is destroying a wonder forested space on Turtle Island. What is given to all in common is the transforming relational space they are both/all included in).

(3.) “… what we call empty space contains an immense background of energy, and that matter as we know it is a small, ‘quantized’ wavelike excitation on top of this background, rather like a tiny ripple on a vast sea. In current physical theories, one avoids the explicit consideration of this background by calculating only the difference between the energy of empty space and that of space with matter in it. This difference is all that counts in the determination of the general properties of matter as they are presently accessible to observation. However, further developments in physics may make it possible to probe the above-described background in a more direct way. Moreover, even at present, this vast sea of energy may play a key part in the understanding of the cosmos as a whole. In this connection it may be said that space, which has so much energy, is full rather than empty…It is being suggested here, then, that what we perceive through the senses as empty space is actually the plenum, which is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The things that appear to our senses are derivative forms and their true meaning can be seen only when we consider the plenum, in which they are generated and sustained, and into which they must ultimately vanish.” --- David Bohm

(the ‘true meaning’ of figures can only be understood in the context of the ‘ground’ in which they continually gather and are regathered).

(3.) “Continual transition does not allow us to speak of “individuals,” etc; the “number” of beings is itself in flux. We would say nothing of time and know nothing of motion if we did not, in a coarse fashion, believe we see stationary forms beside transitory flow. The same applies to cause and effect, and without the erroneous conception of “empty space” we should certainly not have acquired the conception of space. The principle of identity has behind it the “appearance” that it refers to the same things. A world in a state of becoming could not, in a strict sense, be “comprehended” or “known”; only to the extent that the “comprehending” and “knowing” intellect encounters a coarse, already-created world, fabricated out of nothing but appearances but become firm to the extent that this kind of appearance has preserved life–only to this extent is there anything like “knowledge”; i. e., a matching of earlier and more recent errors with one another.” – Nietzsche, Will to Power, 520 (1885)

(the dynamic ground, while the primary physical reality, while it can be experienced, cannot be ‘known’ and ‘discussed’ without building the discussion on top of ‘figures’ which are nothing more than ‘appearances’ in a physical sense, like the hurricane in the flow of the atmosphere).

(4.) “Reason” is the cause of our falsification of the testimony of the senses. Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction. The “apparent” world is the only one: the “true” world is merely added by a lie.” – Nietzsche, ‘Twilight of the Idols’

(‘being’ is what we impute to the transient dynamic forms that gather in the flow. ‘being’ is an ‘empty fiction’ but as in Nietzsche’s previous statement, it is the basis of ‘knowing’. But as Heraclitus also says; “the knowledge of many things does not teach understanding”.)

(5.) “Our judgement has us conclude that every change must have an author”;–but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say “lightning flashes,” I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, “is” and does not “become.”–To regard an event as an “effecting,” and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.” – Nietzsche, ‘Will to Power’, 531

(in order to reduce the flow or ‘dynamic ground’ to a view that is solely in terms of dynamic figures and what they do; i.e. the view of dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’, we take a dimple in the flow and give it a name, like ‘Katrina’ and having imputed ‘being’ to this transient feature in the flow, we impute it to be the author of its own dynamic so that the development of the feature in the flow appears to be jumpstarted by this ‘named being’ called ‘Katrina’ as in ‘Katrina is growing and intensifying’, ‘wreaking destruction’ etc. etc. We thus artificially CREATE a local author of an action when that action was coming from a larger action (a whorl within a flow) and was not locally sourced. Our visual observation oriented us to the visible aspect of the feature which was in fact a purely relational ‘resonance structure’ [vapour going round and round LOOKS LIKE a ‘local thing-in-itself’ so why not, for simplicity’s sake, define it as a thing-in-itself and make ‘it’ the author of ‘its own action’?]. As John Stuart Mill observed in this regard; “every definition implies an axiom, that in which we affirm the existence of the object defined”)

(6.) “And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income …” –Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’, 1067

(Nietzsche is saying what Mach has said and what Bohm says in a calmer/cooler way, that the universe is a continually transforming relational [flow-] space but that we get to ‘know it’ by the dynamic forms that emerge within it. The earth’s biosphere persists while a whole diverse succession of ‘forms’ continuously gather and regather within it. Things like human population do not ‘grow’ since the only dynamic in a relational space is transformation [the notion of ‘growth of a thing’ or ‘growth in numbers’ implies an fixed reference frame]. In order for ‘growth’ to occur, the thing ‘growing’ must have a persisting identity of its own. We say that a zone of turbulence on the surface of the earth [a hurricane] ‘grows’ but the calm area around it simultaneously shrinks, which is to say that the physical dynamic is the transforming flow and the ‘growth’ is merely ‘appearance’. The growth of the Emperor’s empire can be defined by the length of the wall around the periphery of the empire that fences out the ‘wilderness’ beyond the wall, but as the empire continues to grow, the wall starts to shrink [after it goes beyond one hemisphere] until the wall may only be a hundred metres long and the wilderness reduced to a small park in the emperor’s ‘back yard’).

(7.) “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). …” “… The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. …” “Let me say at the outset, that in this discourse, I am opposing not a few special statements of quantum physics held today (1950s), I am opposing as it were the whole of it, I am opposing its basic views that have been shaped 25 years ago, when Max Born put forward his probability interpretation, which was accepted by almost everybody.” ---Erwin Schroedinger

(Schroedinger is on a rant because scientists wanted to preserve the ‘being’ of the ‘particle’ or ‘figure’ instead of accepting that it is a resonance feature in the dynamics of the ground or ‘energy-charged flow’. They did this by using a probability interpretation of quantum dynamics so as to imply that the particle-as-‘being’ or ‘thing-in-itself’ is there somewhere, we just don’t know ‘where’ until we ‘measure it’ [impose an absolute space and time reference frame] and THEN it is there. Mach’s earlier rant on those same scientists refusal to accept relational space, he expressed thus; “After exhorting the reader, with Christian charity, to respect his opponent, Planck brands me, in the well-known Biblical words, as a ‘false prophet.’ It appears that physicists are already on their way to founding a church; they are already using a church’s traditional weapons. To this I answer simply: ‘If belief in the reality of atoms is so important to you, I cut myself off from the physicist’s mode of thinking, I do not wish to be a true physicist, I renounce all scientific respect— in short: I decline with thanks the communion of the faithful. I prefer freedom of thought.” — Ernst Mach, ‘The Guiding Principles of My Scientific Theory of Knowledge’. See also ‘Ernst Mach leaves the Church of Physics’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Br J Philos Sci (1989) 40 (4): 519-540.))

(8.) “So [since the problem of certainty in identity such as A=A is handled, in Euclidian geometry, by invoking the notion of invariable solids] “objects” are implicitly assumed to be invariable bodies. Therefore the axioms of geometry already contain an irreducible assumption which does not follow from the axioms themselves. Axiomatic systems provide us with “faulty definitions” of objects, definitions that are grounded not in formal logic but in a hypothesis — a “prejudice” as Hans-Georg Gadamer might say — that is prior to logic. As a corollary, our logic of identity cannot be said to be necessary and universally valid. “Such axioms,” says Poincaré, “would be utterly meaningless to a being living in a world in which there are only fluids.” — Vladimir Tasic

(Tasic, like Poincaré, is saying that the standard assumption of ‘identity’ used in Aristotelian logic and in geometry is just a ‘prejudice’ that we impose on the observational data. If the ‘figure’ and ‘ground’ is a fluid [relational] system, as contended by Mach and Bohm etc. then such axioms as underlie the notion of ‘the invariable solids of geometry’ are meaningless, and as Poincaré elaborates on, the serve only as a kind of ‘language game’ that synthetically turns ‘appearances’ into pseudo-reality; >“Finally, our Euclidean geometry is itself only a sort of convention of language; mechanical facts might be enunciated with reference to a non-Euclidean space which would be a guide less convenient than, but just as legitimate as, our ordinary space ; the enunciation would thus become much more complicated, but it would remain possible. Thus absolute space, absolute time, geometry itself, are not conditions which impose themselves on mechanics ; all these things are no more antecedent to mechanics than the French language is logically antecedent to the verities one expresses in French.” – Henri Poincare, Science and Hypothesis)

(9.) “In extending his living space in a manner that destroys the space of others, he destroys his own space. Not initially his inside space, his ‘self’, but his outside space, this real outside-of-self which nourishes his ‘inside-of-self’. The protection of this outside space now becomes the condition without which he is unable to pursue the growth of his own powers of being.” - Frédéric Neyrat

(This is one example citation of many where people are picking up on the relational geometry of space and Mach’s principle [figure and ground are in conjugate relation] as is understood in the aboriginal culture, as articulated in the following citation)

(10.) “You must teach the children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. … This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” Script writer using nom-de-plume ‘Chief Seattle’, capturing Northwest Amerindian ‘relational understanding’ aka ‘Mach’s principle’

(As mentioned above, people are generally coming around to the understanding that mainstream science only deals in ‘what things-in-themselves do’ which ignores the conjugate inhabitant-habitat or figure-ground relation. In the relational space we live in, everything that we push out bounces back in some way. The way the habitat-dynamic bounces back on us launders out the particular inhabitant actions that are pushing out; e.g. the storm cells are pushing out into the flow of the atmosphere at the same time as the flow of the atmosphere is pushing into the storm-cells. Space serves as a ‘mediating medium’. If more and more farmers use ‘roundup’ on their ‘round-up ready’ crops then the concentration of ‘roundup’ will continue to build in the habitat and will inevitably influence more change than that which is planned in the simple ‘what things-in-themselves do’ dynamics of figures only view of mainstream science.)

(11.) “What are these academics so afraid of that they can’t face and contemplate and answer student’s questions about Whorf’s actual text? Why the smoke and mirrors? I suspect that they fear, and rightly so, that the entire Western worldview — logic, reason, science, philosophy, categories — the entire ‘civilization’ enterprise of which academia is a part, in fact, is at stake; or at least the superior attitude that often accompanies it. It may be a fear that what we’re culturally heir to is ‘just another worldview and its langscapes’ rather than exemplifying, as we tend to want to believe, eternal and universal human logic, which we’re simply ‘better at’ than people who speak other languages outside of the Indo-European language family. As John Lucy says, relativity “challenges assumptions which lie at the heart of much modern social and behavior research — namely its claim to be discovering general laws and to be truly scientific.” – Dan Moonhawk Alford (MIT linguistics researcher)

(Dan Alford supports the view of Benjamin Whorf that our language influences our ‘reality’ and the view that ‘relational’ languages such as Hopi which do not reduce the conjugate figure/ground relation to the one-sided view solely in terms of the dynamics of figures [‘what things-in-themselves do’] deliver a more physically real ‘reality’ to the user of these languages. )

(12.) “Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs. — Marshall McLuhan

(McLuhan is implying that everything starts from the medium, from the continually transforming medium or ‘dynamic ground’. This is where we start to build the Cadillac factory, in the continually transforming relational space we all live in. We do not start to build it on a blank sheet of paper or in a blank empty space, the ‘design space’ where all we have to deal with is ‘the dynamics of figures’ or ‘what things-in-themselves do’. The starting point is the continually transforming relational space which is ‘the full package’, ‘all she wrote’. What we are physically doing is modifying the relations in this continually transforming relational space so as to accommodate within it, the factory concept. Meanwhile, the transformation of relations with one another and the habitat is THE REAL PHYSICAL DYNAMIC, as Mach also says. The notion of the factory as a ‘thing-in-itself’ is an empty Fiktion).

(13.) “ The photographic plate preserves for us a picture of a fleeting moment, which perhaps we may make use of over a long time period for measurements, or it transforms a wave-field of heat rays, X rays, or electron rays to a visible image. And yet, important information about the object is missing in a photographic image. This is a problem which has been a key one for Dennis Gabor during his work on information theory. Because the image reproduces only the effect of the intensity of the incident wave-field, not its nature. The other characteristic quantity of the waves, phase, is lost and thereby the three dimensional geometry. The phase depends upon from which direction the wave is coming and how far it has travelled from the object to be imaged. Gabor found the solution to the problem of how one can retain a wave-field with its phase on a photographic plate.” – Erik Ingelstam, in presenting Gabor with his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971

(Gabor’s theory of communications opened the way for understanding ‘the dynamics of content’ in conjunction with ‘the dynamics of context’; i.e. by way of the conjugate content-context relation. Classical communications theory constrains ‘signal’ to ‘the dynamics of content’ [items of content seen as ‘things-in-themselves’] and is a purificationist scheme that seeks to extract the ‘signal content’ from the ‘noise’ [defined as undesired signal]. Gabor’s theory assumes all signal is good signal and extracts the message from the dynamic field of context by way of spatial relational coherence. There is no dependency in this case on the items of content as ‘things-in-themselves’. In visual applications, this leads to ‘holography’ where the transforming relational wavefield supplies the imagery by way of coherency in phase interference, and there is no dependency on ‘the dynamics of things-in-themselves’. The three dimensional light field [dynamic ground] includes within it the changing/moving forms [dynamic figures]. There is a direct comparison to the communications technique of the aboriginal ‘learning circles’ which deliver their understanding by way of coherency in the relational interference of a diverse multiplicity of observations and experiences, and to classical communications theory where the individual particulars line up and present their accounts one by one to reviewers which use a purificationist process to decide who’s account is most true).

. * * *

Ok, as I say, its important, when reading the following, to suspend our usual ‘reduction’ of the data to terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’ or ‘all dynamic figures and no dynamic ground’ which is what mainstream science and ‘rational inquiry’ does. If we fall into that trap, which is hard to avoid because of the noun-very architecture of our European languages ( ““The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group . . . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.” – Edward Sapir)

The above citations are ‘reminders’ that we have this ‘other choice’ that we are not in the habit of using, to understand the same physical phenomena in ‘relational space’ terms wherein the ‘figures’ and ‘ground’ are in ‘conjugate relation’; i.e. ‘reminders’ that we do not have to reduce our observations and experience to pure and sole terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’.

As I mentioned above, the hierarchical organization structure follows directly from the assumption of ‘things-in-themselves’ since if a local system is presented as a ‘thing-in-itself’ the it must have within it its own source of direction (management) and its own operative organs and limbs (workers). Meanwhile, if the ‘local system’ is instead presented as an organ within its ‘suprasystem’, its development and behaviour is then orchestrated by the dynamic ground it is included in, and there is no need for a local ‘supreme central authority’ to jumpstart the local agency of the notional ‘thing-in-itself’. For example, if the U.S. thought of itself as a ‘cell’ or ‘gathering’ within a global flow, its conjugate cell-flow relation would orchestrate its organization as in the nature’s dynamics as in the example of the community farming operation as contrasted with the factory farming operation. However, once the figure in the ground ‘declares itself to be a local, independently existing thing-in-itself with its own internal jumpstarting behaviour’,... then the hierarchical split into ‘leaders and followers’ or ‘management class’ and ‘working class’ follows from there.

I will agree that we're all guilty of varying levels of hypocracy while never changing the way we live i.e. buying from stores, working capitalist jobs, participating in capitalist culture, etc. I'll also agree that this is a phenomenally immature article. Perhaps what we need to do is create new living arrangements with each other, grow our own food and drop all the capital culture drivel that we would normally hate as much as we hate our opressors.